Snap Lays Off 10% of Its Work Force

Snap, the parent of messaging app Snapchat, on Monday said it would lay off more than 500 employees, joining other tech companies in a wave of new cost-cutting measures.

The layoffs amount to 10 percent of its global work force; the majority will occur in the first quarter of 2024.

“We have made the difficult decision to restructure our team,” the company said in a securities filing, adding that it would take pretax charges of $55 million to $75 million, primarily for severance and related costs.

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have announced layoffs this year, following tens of thousands across the sector last year.

Snap laid off a small number of employees on Friday, Business Insider reported.

The company is set to report earnings on Tuesday. Cost-cutting measures at other companies have buoyed stock prices. Snap shares were trading about 2 percent lower before the market opened on Monday.

Like other social media companies reliant on advertising, Snap has had a rough couple years. Changes by Apple to its privacy policy in 2021 made it tougher for advertisers to track users — something that hurt Snap and also had a heavy effect on Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

Snapchat, which has more than 400 million daily active users, experienced a revenue decline in the first two quarters of last year and only 5 percent growth in its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30.

In 2022, Snap cut 20 percent of its work force, or 1,300 jobs, and also discontinued at least six products. It let go nearly 20 product managers in November and in September shut a division that sells augmented reality products to businesses, laying off 170 people.